Reading is a matter of the heart, because books live in the hearts of men and women. In the course of reading, we inhabit different realities, live different lives and walk through different sunsets. We are drawn into a narrative outside of ourselves, voyaging through strange worlds. In fact, deep reading is never a passive pursuit, the reader becomes the book and sometimes even experiences a déja vu when confronted with situations and scenes absorbed from a book.
As a teenager I lived the life of Elizabeth Bennet in the English country side, with her prejudices and love-hate relationship with Darcy and his inexorable pride. The rigours of an Honours course led me to cover most of the classics and I moved on to other great works of literature. I became a reader in the true sense. The joys and sorrows, the traumas and underlying emotions that translate into a work of literature became mine and continue to be so. Books belong as much to the reader as the writer.
Once the page is written, and flies off the mind and heart of the writer beyond his pen, it belongs to the world, sustained by generations of readers in conversation with writers across time, just as the deity in a temple becomes real with the devotion of her worshippers through the agesEvery great book is a search for meaning. We recognise ourselves in others, we learn empathy and humour and arrive at a validation of our condition. We learn about human desire, ambition, anguish, the nobility of the human spirit and ” the beauty of all things terrible”.
There can be no greater friend or confidant or mentor than great works of literature when we turn to them on occasions of happiness or sorrow. In the medieval morality play, Everyman, Everyman who is unable to undertake the arduous journey of life laments, “O to whom shall I make me moan/ For to go with me in the heavy journey?” The character ‘Knowledge’ steps forward “Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side.”
At a time when freedom of expression is under attack and diversity is challenged by rising intolerance, books are a means to counter what Shakespeare called ”the common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance.” In Milton’s words, inscribed on the archway of the New York Public Library, “A good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”